Thing (assembly)

A thing (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing; Norwegian, Danish and Swedish: ting; German and Dutch: ding) was the governing assembly of a Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by lawspeakers. Its meeting-place was called a thingstead.

The Anglo-Saxon folkmoot or folkmote (Old English – "folk meeting", modern Norwegian; folkemøte) was analogous, the forerunner to the witenagemot and a precursor of the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Today the term lives on in the English term husting, in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions of Nordic countries and, in the Manx form tyn, as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man.

The Old Norse, Old Frisian, and Old English þing with the meaning "assembly" is identical in origin to the English word thing, German Ding, Dutch ding, and modern Scandinavian ting when meaning "object". All of these terms derive from Proto-Germanic *þingą meaning "appointed time", and some suggest an origin in Proto-Indo-European *ten-, "stretch", as in a "stretch of time for an assembly". The word shift in the meaning of the word thing from "assembly" to "object" is mirrored in the evolution of the Latin causa ("judicial lawsuit") to modern French chose, Spanish/Italian/Catalan cosa, and Portuguese coisa (all meaning "object" or "thing"). A word with similar meaning, the cognate to English sake (purpose), sak in Norwegian and Swedish, sag in Danish, zaak in Dutch, and Sache in German, still retains the meaning "affair, matter" alongside "thing, object".

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